Area studies

Gideon Rachman notes that despite the French concern with happiness, the French themselves are pretty depressed. 

I'm pretty sure stories like this are not going to lift the mood of French President Nicolas Sarkozy: 

There is no Club Sarkozy nearby in this sweltering, squalid capital [of Guinea]; in West Africa, the French president cannot compete at present, despite his country’s historic connections as the former colonial power here. Right now, in this volatile region, mere mention of being from America — Obama’s America — is enough to avert an armed soldier’s grim gaze, defuse a mob’s anger, soften an unyielding border guard or lower the demands from ubiquitous bribe-seeking policemen.

The president’s name, freshly painted, appears above a barbershop, a grocery, a school, even tire stores here, as well as the cabaret in Boulbinet. In a leading bookstore downtown, a full-scale poster of Obama looks out from behind a closed door, a visual echo of the sentiments of those who go in to discuss politics.

The implications of this new American authority in an unfamiliar spot received a tryout last week, when the Obama administration sent a senior diplomat here to condemn the massacre of dozens of unarmed civilians protesting Guniea’s military government in September. They seem clear: America punches above its weight, in a part of the world that it has hitherto left to the French. The United States, with few practical sticks to beat the junta, nonetheless has a moral authority in the streets that the big-dog French do not match....

[W]hen Mrs. Clinton said the next day that she was “appalled” by the “vile violation of the rights of the people” in Guinea, Captain Camara had nothing to say, publicly at least. But when Mr. Kouchner called for an international intervention force, the captain angrily said, “Guinea is not a subprefecture, is not a neighborhood in France.”

The differing reactions were not lost on local observers. Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, an opposition leader, said Captain Camara “dared to defy France, but he didn’t dare defy the U.S.”

“America is a power that counts,” Mr. Diallo said. “You can’t turn your back on them.”

Oh, snap. 

My latest column for Newsweek International is now available.  It looks at optimistic and pessimistic modes of thought with regard to China's future, and suggests that they can both be right: 

I belong to the third camp—the one that believes that the Bubblers and the Extrapolators can both be right. My camp looks at China and sees the parallels with America's rise to global economic greatness during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From an outsider's vantage point, America looked like a machine that could take immigrants and raw materials and spit out manufactured goods at will. By 1890, the U.S. economy was the largest and most productive in the world. As any student of American history knows, however, these were hardly tranquil times for the United States. Immigration begat ethnic tensions in urban areas. The shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy led to fierce and occasionally violent battles between laborers, farmers, and owners of capital. With an immature financial sector, recession and depressions racked the American economy for decades.

It is not contradictory for China to amass a larger share of wealth and power while still suffering from severe domestic vulnerabilities. From the perspective of the rest of the world, however, this is not a good thing.

As for why it's not a good thing, well, you'll have to read the whole article. 

It looks like the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which used to be the Socialist Party, is poised for victory in next month's elections.  And they're proposing some pretty radical stuff, according to the FT's Mure Dickie: 

The party’s manifesto pledges to end “bureaucrat-led” government by posting about 100 party Diet members to government ministries and agencies, setting up a national strategy bureau under the prime minister and taking control of senior bureaucratic promotions.

Cabinet meeting agendas would no longer be set by unelected administrative vice-ministers, while the practice of amakudari, or descent from heaven, where elite bureaucrats are parachuted into jobs at government agencies or private companies, will be banned.

“When all this is done, we will have realised a new politics for all: no longer a politics of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats and for the bureaucrats, but of the people, by the people and for the people,” said Yukio Hatoyama, DPJ president.

This is pretty radical stuff by Japanese standards, changing practices that have been around for more than half a century.  And even though this is coming from a left party, I wonder whether this would lead to an entrepreneurial boom in Japan. 

Japan has always funneled its best and brightest into Todai law school, and then to the economic bureaucracies, and then amakudari.  If that system ends, will Japan's brightest minds even go into government service?  Will they stop going to Tokyo law school?  Might they -- gasp -- go into business instead? 

Maybe not -- entrepreneurs do not necessarily come from the ranks of the elite.  But it's going to be a veeery interesting social science experiment if the DPJ does what it says. 

Developing.....

Rob Farley wrote a excellent post last week explaining the crucial decision-making nodes during a social uprising against a repressive regime. 

Basically, people power revolutions only work in changing the regime if one of two things happen.  First, if the government decides not to pull the trigger on its citizens, then the state loses its trump card ad falls.  Second, if the coercive apparatus either resists or splinters in the wake of an order to pull the trigger, then things get much more messy, but the government usually falls. 

Looking at Iran right now, I don't think either condition is holding.  Sunday's events strongly suggest that the Khamenei regime is willing to kill to stay in power, though how much killing remains open to question (as horrific as the YouTube videos have been, there has not been any large-scale slaughter yet).  

As for the coercive apparatus, the signs are that they will hang together rather than hang separately.  The Revolutionary Guards just upped the ante: 

Threatening to crush dissent, the powerful Revolutionary Guards warned protesters Monday that they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they returned to the streets in their challenge to the presidential election results and their defiance of the country’s leadership....

A Revolutionary Guards statement Monday told protesters who took to the streets in a week of demonstrations to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces” if they continued their protests, news reports said.

I have seen no indication that other components of the coercive apparatus -- non-Revolutionary Guards military, police, Interior Ministry, etc. -- are either cracking or defecting from the regime.  And as Laura Secor points out, "Although the country’s constituency for democracy is vast and growing, the regime has a constituency, too, and it is passionately loyal and heavily armed."

There are only two cards left to play for the opposition.  If they double down on street protests, it forces the Basij and Revolutionary Guards to start killing in large numbers, and that could cause a splintering of the state. 

The other card is Rafsanjani's.  If he uses his institutional power to discredit Khamenei via the Assembly of Experts, then it raises further legitimacy questions.  Rafsanjani's been pretty quiet as of late, however, and I suspect his risk-aversion will keep him quiet regardless of the long-term consequences. 

Am I missing anything? 

Robin Wright explains in Time why these videos [WARNING:  VERY GRAPHIC] have created a focal point for the opposition in Iran with foreboding consequences for the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei regime: 

Although it is not yet clear who shot "Neda" (a soldier? pro-government militant? an accidental misfiring?), her death may have changed everything. For the cycles of mourning in Shiite Islam actually provide a schedule for political combat — a way to generate or revive momentum. Shiite Muslims mourn their dead on the third, seventh and 40th days after a death, and these commemorations are a pivotal part of Iran's rich history. During the revolution, the pattern of confrontations between the shah's security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles.

The first clashes in January 1978 produced two deaths that were then commemorated on the 40th day in mass gatherings, which in turn produced new confrontations with security forces — and new deaths. Those deaths then generated another 40-day period of mourning, new clashes, and further deaths. The cycle continued throughout most of the year until the shah's ouster in January 1979.

The same cycle has already become an undercurrent in Iran's current crisis. The largest demonstration, on Thursday of last week, was called by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to commemorate the deaths of protesters three days after they were killed.

Shiite mourning is not simply a time to react with sadness. Particularly in times of conflict, it is also an opportunity for renewal. The commemorations for "Neda" and the others killed this weekend are still to come. And the 40th day events are usually the largest and most important.

We can and should argue about the ability of the Iranian state to contain the effects of new media technologies.  In a strategic sense, however, the government has already failed with the posting of the Neda videos.  They've given the opposition a focal point around which to rally. 

To repeat a theme:  this does not mean that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei will fall from power (See:  Tank Man, Goddess of Democracy).  What it means is that even if they maintain their grip on power, they have lost all of their legitimacy. 

Same event, wildly different numbers on the turnout. 

Al Jazeera: 

Tens of thousands of Iranians have rallied in the country's capital in defiance of a government ban to protest against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

New York Times (hat tip to Kevin Drum): 

Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran's disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance that appeared to be the largest demonstration in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Andrew Sullivan's Twitter sources: 

There are reports of about 3m ppl out on the streets.  Millions of people marching in absolute silence. 

Size matters here.  Tens of thousands is a serious but likely containable situation for Iran's security forces.  With millions, you're talking about the potential for a repeat of something awful that happened about twenty years ago. 

So, which data point do you trust?

AFP/Getty Images

I don't have too many complaints with Barack Obama's foreign policy to date.  But I'm beginning to wonder about his effect on America's foreign policy bloggers. 

Today, I see that Josh Marshall recommends Juan Cole's blog as the place to check for updates on Iranian elections.  I don't always agree with Cole, but Iran is right in his wheelhouse, so off I click.

His top post, entitled, "Iran Awaits Ballot Results; Obama Effect Expected," contains this paragraph: 

Howard LaFranchi at CSM asks what the 'Obama Effect' will be on the Iranian revolution. Although it was not decisive, scientific polling in Lebanon suggests that Obama did have an effect in the defeat of the Hezbollah coalition, "March 8", in Lebanon, even if it was a slight one.

Hmmm.... there was scientific polling done on this?  Really?  Rats.  Earlier this week I expressed my skepticism about the Obama effect in Lebanon's election.  Ready to concede that I might have been wrong, I clicked through Cole's link to find the following: 

Neither [Lebanon nor Iran] has any accurate, independent or publicly available political polling, and no poll has attempted to substantively gauge the effect of Obama's presidency or his recent Cairo outreach speech to Muslims on either country.

One recent poll done on behalf of two U.S.-based public-interest groups found that few Iranians — only 29 percent — said they have favorable opinions of the United States, and that the view had changed little since Obama's election.

Both of Cole's links have quotes from experts claiming that there might have been a mild Obama effect.  There ain't no scientific polling, however. 

Let's everyone slowly walk away from the Obama hyperbole, shall we? 

UPDATE:  Cole has corrected his post. 

From a U.S. perspective, Lebanon's election went very well: 

An American-backed alliance has retained control of the Lebanese Parliament after a hotly contested election billed as a showdown between Tehran and Washington for influence in the Middle East....

The alliance, known as the March 14 coalition, won the majority in the 128-member parliament with 71 seats, compared with to 57 for the Hezbollah-led coalition, according to official results announced Monday by the government. The results represent a significant and unexpected defeat for Hezbollah and its allies, Iran and Syria. Most polls had showed a tight race, but one in which the Hezbollah-led group would win.

Just to pre-empt the question that will inevitably be asked in the United States -- "this was because of President Obama's Cairo speech, right?" -- I would refer everyone to this New York Times story from six weeks ago by Robert Worth: 

[P]arliamentary elections here in June are shaping up to be among the most expensive ever held anywhere, with hundreds of millions of dollars streaming into this small country from around the globe.

Lebanon has long been seen as a battleground for regional influence, and now, with no more foreign armies on the ground, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region are arming their allies here with campaign money in place of weapons. The result is a race that is widely seen as the freest and most competitive to be held here in decades, with a record number of candidates taking part. But it may also be the most corrupt....

[E]ven a narrow win by Hezbollah and its allies, now in the parliamentary opposition, would be seen as a victory for Iran — which has financed Hezbollah for decades — and a blow to American allies in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt. So the money flows.

“We are putting a lot into this,” said one adviser to the Saudi government, who added that the Saudi contribution was likely to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in a country of only four million people. “We’re supporting candidates running against Hezbollah, and we’re going to make Iran feel the pressure.”

Given that the March 14 coalition outperformed the polling, it's entirely possible that factors other than money played a role in the outcome -- Nate Silver needs to go global in his analysis.  Still, unless Mark Lynch tells me otherwise, methinks this result is clearly not just about the power of rhetoric.